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Saturday, June 24, 2006

My Murky Past as a Secondhand Bookseller

The other day I came across some old photographs of my ill-fated secondhand bookshop venture in Camelford, North Cornwall, and decided to post them up on the blog, to share them with you. They made me come over all nostalgic for a moment, so I had to remind myself that I ploughed the last of my capital into this secondhand bookshop, launched it in 2002 with no business acumen or experience - and almost no advertising - and that it sank hopelessly into a pit of debt and despair before the first year was even up.

An old and sadly only too familiar tale for anyone who's ever been in business, I'm sure. But even reminding myself how I came to be so grindingly poor does not eradicate the little spark of nostalgia and fondness which leapt inside me as I viewed the photos of my old bookshop.

It really was a curiosity shop too, as you may be able to see from these photographs: strange prints on the wall, of nudes and who knows what else; a pair of elephant stools, hand-carved and painted; an exotic carved wooden wall-frieze; books sprawling everywhere, from cheap 60s & 70s 'Confessions of a Window-Cleaner' pulp fiction, to Modern Firsts of well-known twentieth-century poets, to antiquarian editions of Milton and Darwin; an impressive collection of occult literature - a local preacher came in one day and bought The Witch's Bible in order to burn it; an antique dark wooden settle for readers to relax on whilst browsing, and a large centrepiece table with an assortment of chairs for writing workshops and other social events.

Camelford was not ready for a bookshop, however. Rather like the bare platform in the poem 'Adlestrop', nobody came and nobody went for the first six months. A few local browsers would drop by in their lunch hour, engage me in idle talk, then disappear without parting with a penny. Once, a man in a weary-looking suit came in, poked around for a while, then smiled over the desk and told me that nobody reads books on the Cornish side of the Tamar. He was a bookseller from Devon.

One of my most serious problems was that I had little money for advertising, running a few poetry events instead to raise the shop's profile in the community, yet still failing to make enough in sales to cover the rent, rates and other outgoings. But I still maintain the shop failed because it was in too tough a location to draw regular custom - beyond the main body of the village, on a steep and dangerously busy hill, with almost no pavement. Even the Indian King Arts Centre, situated almost directly opposite, was struggling at the time and later closed down.

After I left, there was an art gallery there for a while. When we last drove past the shop, on holiday in Cornwall about a year ago, that too had gone.

Just discovered that the Indian King Arts Centre, run by Helen Jagger Wood, definitely closed down just after my bookshop, since it is now a rather posh restaurant with B&B accomodation above. If I can run to the cost of a meal there, I'll drop by next time I'm in Camelford (later this summer, possibly) and try them out. Though looking at the prices, maybe I'll have a bar snack instead. A very modest bar snack. Home-made pork scratchings or something ...

For those interested in such things, 'Ravals' is the name of that new restaurant in Camelford ...

"The building’s current name is ‘The Indian King’. This dates back to the 18th century, when in 1734 Tomo Chachi a Cherokee Indian King, his wife Senauki and Tooanakowki their son were brought over from Georgia, North America. Historic records show they travelled the country starting from a Cornish port and these picturesque characters would have aroused great interest at the places they stayed at en route. In 1735 the name was changed to the ‘Higher King's Arms’, and by the 19th century it was simply known as the ‘King's Arms’ and the name of the building has now come back full circle to ‘The Indian King’ which was most recently a community arts centre before it’s conversion into Raval’s.

At present the building is being used as a Restaurant and Bed and Breakfast, but its original use was a Public House in the 17th century."

From Raval's website, the restaurant on the site of the former Arts Centre opposite my little bookshop in Camelford: Ravals. I hope they get enough business to survive - outside the holiday season, it can be tough going for the more expensive restaurants, as the locals can rarely afford them and there is little in the way of 'passing trade' in a place like Camelford.

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The Queen's Secret: Victoria Lamb

Published Autumn 2012

That's the kind of poet Jane Holland is, a superb thinker-ahead, a person who always knows where the poem is going to go, even before the poem has been written; and that's not in any reductive way, that's in a way that makes you raise your fist and go YESSSS!'

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Kissing the Pink

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The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman

My first poetry collection (Bloodaxe, 1996) out of print but still available from me. Alternatively a revised Second Edition exists as an ebook on Amazon entitled "Disreputable".

'Jane Holland's Boudicca & Co is a book of adventurous, resonant inventions. As the title suggests, it offers a new view from the interior - of both country and psyche - in which history and geography are co-opted in effortless interplay. It's a work of synthesis, and of poetic and emotional maturity, in which Holland emerges as a true craftswoman, a supple and graceful thinker with an effortless grasp of line, at the heart of the English lyric tradition.'

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Matt Merritt on Jane Holland's LAMENT OF THE WANDERER: 'an original and moving re-imagining of one of the great works of medieval literature.'

Available as a chapbook with Introduction from Heaventree Press, or in CAMPER VAN BLUES (Salt Publishing, 2008).

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Helena Nelson, Ambit 2007

Praise for Boudicca & Co

'Extremely powerful and varied ... Holland has both the clarity for the reader and the mastery of language to say what she means in a way that makes the brain tingle with both shock and pleasure ... This collection is outstanding.'

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Before the Wrinkles but After the Gregory

'... we need only compare Holland's work with the anti-war 'poetry' of Harold Pinter to gain some indication of how rich and rewarding her response to modern conflict is - by shifting methods towards the imaginative and narrative elements of poetry, rather than the rhetorical and political. In this sense, the 'Boudicca' sequence has a great deal in common with David Harsent's Legion, which represents a similar attempt by a non-combatant poet to engage intelligently with the realities of war. This is, frankly, an outstanding collection, and Holland, as a result, can now count herself amongst the front rank of contemporary British poets.'

Pollard on 'Boudicca'

"Boudicca & Co. is a bold re-imagining of Britishness. Steeped in myth and medieval poetry, this is a land of 'ruins under rain,' hares, oaks, gargoyles and the Green Man. At the heart of it, embodying both Britain's fierce beauty and its bloodied past, is Boudicca, and her voice is a startling achievement: modern, pitch-black, funny, and yet hauntingly lyrical."

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Nearby 'Old Nun Wood'

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